


Poète Maudit

by Quedarius



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anthony and his Predilection for danger, Background Slash, F/M, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 08:55:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4173717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He should be disgusted by the older man’s lingering eyes, the hungry motion of those lips he’s mocked over drinks with other grad students so often, but of course he isn’t. <i>L’appel du vide,</i> Julia had called it once, his predilection for destruction, and he’d found that so delightful he’d thrown himself into a short series of reckless one-night stands in response. A dozen little stories told in the shadows of unfamiliar apartments, the whisper of unfamiliar sheets.<br/>----<br/>Exploration of Anthony's past with Dr. Fell, and what reasons he might have to hate him so very, very much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poète Maudit

How very typical.

It would seem absurd, did Anthony not know himself, in all his flaws and unfortunate desires, very well. He has not proven to be delusional, only reckless. And so it comes as no surprise that, when Dr. Fell smiles that particular smile over the freshly graded papers—the first time he’s looked at any of them with anything other than a mild, patronizing disinterest—Anthony’s entire being stirs.

And, oh yes. His cock as well.

He should be disgusted by the older man’s lingering eyes, the hungry motion of those lips he’s mocked over drinks with other grad students so often, but of course he isn’t. _L’appel du vide_ , Julia had called it once, his predilection for destruction, and he’d found that so delightful he’d thrown himself into a short series of reckless one-night stands in response. A dozen little stories told in the shadows of unfamiliar apartments, the whisper of unfamiliar sheets.

And when Fell smiles at him like that, he doesn’t discourage, doesn’t leave, doesn’t grin uncomfortably and make some excuse to escape. He freezes, and imagines that he can hear the murmur of a river, at the bottom of a very long drop. Imagines looking wide-eyed over the precipice and seeing only velvet darkness.

The hand that brushes over the back of his own is chapped, ink-stained, and he likes that too. He wants to lose himself in those lines. Current drives a thrill up his spine at the thought of it marking him like a page, and when he looks up, curious, to see what he might find in Fell’s expression, he starts. Every bad pornography and smutty novel that’s ever worked his hand into a haphazard rhythm flashes alarms and he thinks— _this is it, he is going to have me right here on the desk so he can fuck me while looking at his awards_.

But no. Through the haze of this sudden madness that’s overcome him, he hears himself being dismissed.

“Thank you Antony, that will be all for now.”

He bristles at the misuse of his name, but shows no sign; only adopts his most charming smile. Fell watches him with those same eyes, that little knowing smile as he waits for the correction.

“My pleasure,” Anthony says instead, not rising to the bait. He may be occasionally hopeless, but he is not, after all, a dog.

* * *

 

“What a prick,” Julia says later, sliding naked limbs out from beneath his to reach the nightstand. Anthony rolls onto his back, feeling heavy and pleased, and watches as she inhales through bottle blue glass. The image is suggestive enough that it draws slow molten lines through his veins, even having just spent his energy, and he captures it. Twists words around the shape of her lips for a moment, Dr. Fell forgotten. Her eyes are pretty but glazed when she turns back to him, smoke coiling pearly from between parted lips.

“You’re not actually considering sleeping with him, are you?” she asks, her voice low with the exhale. He’s too transfixed by the soft spread of rosy marks he’d left just above her right breast to hear, thinking of the moment when he’d mouthed them sloppily into place. When she slaps his shoulder, expecting an answer, he laughs.

“No; of course not.”

It sounds very convincing, he congratulates himself, but there’s something to Julia’s expression that makes him want to squirm from beneath it. He tries again, scoffing, “I think I can do better than _Roman Fell_.”

She sighs.

“Just be careful, right?”

She sets the bowl down in exchange for her glasses, then the bit of black lace dangling from the headboard. _God bless the folklore major_ he thinks, as she slides into them beneath the hazy glow of sunrise. But he has little regard for caution, and even less for the sad, patient way that she smiles at him as she buttons up her blouse.

* * *

 

Of course, when it happens, it isn’t in the doctor’s musty office, nor in the sprawling house Anthony knows he owns only through rumor, but in a cheap hotel room. The desk clerk gives them a knowing look that makes his insides feel like nothing but dust and bits of dead leaves, and Dr. Fell’s hand on the small of his back as they walk into an elevator that smells of iron and piss is not a kindness, but a claiming.

He is stronger, but he is also more easily bent, and so he is made to do. On his knees, Fell’s hand guiding his head roughly forward, his bravado falls away piece by piece until he is only sensation; the slow uncoiling of longing through his limbs, a blue flame, static before a storm. He asks, he gasps, and at last he pleads, as he knew he would, and Fell is more than happy to turn him to dirt beneath rough, ropy hands.

That the sex lacks poetry doesn’t matter; it burns and flares with raw pleasure, leaves him charcoal brittle and used up. He leaves the hotel in the morning—alone—sore but filled with a pleasant dullness, and only a very quiet self-loathing that he chases away with a few extra hours of sleep before class.

 

* * *

 

“It’s just a fling.”

He tells her, he tells Roman, he tells himself.

“I’m only using him; it’s a tough world out there for a poet.”

Julia nods from the doorway to her room. She’s wearing layers, altogether too many, in his opinion, especially in this moment when he aches to reach for her and fall into something easy and thoughtless. But her arms are crossed over her chest, she’s barring him from the arrangement they once had, and judgement floods her gaze. Judgement and something else that’s harder to look at, and he refuses to believe it’s pity. He thinks, in a moment of childish, defensive cruelty, that it makes her ugly.

“He has a wife, Anthony.”

The laugh that leaves him is empty and mean, and sounds to him, for one terrifying moment, like the grind of an elevator.

“Jesus, Julia; you sound like my mother.”

Her mouth tightens, and he wants to take it back, but he doesn’t. Grabs his coat, kisses her forehead. As close to an apology as his pride will allow. She remains as marble.

“I’m a big boy,” he adds with a wink that’s meant to be cheeky, “I can handle myself.”

 

* * *

 

That night, they meet as they always do. Roman can be cruel, it’s one of the reasons that he appeals to Anthony, but panic clouds his thoughts as he realizes there is no longer any hunger in that dark gaze, only expectation. With the scrape of grubby hotel carpet against his back, he wonders for the first time if perhaps he’s in over his head.

The next day, he overhears Roman telling a colleague that his work shows “real promise” and he decides that he does not care.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The character "Julia" is actually a creation of 9_of_clubs whom I borrowed for my own purposes in this fic, and this whole concept was born of her steadfast ability to not only put up with me constantly talking about Anthony, but to throw ideas back. So she is, as usual, to blame for what words have come from my pen.


End file.
